History

News

Dr. Ute Chamberlin Awarded Faculty Summer Research Stipend

Oct 23, 2008

Dr. Ute Chamberlin, Assistant Professor History at WIU, has been awarded a Faculty Summer Research Stipend by the WIU Foundation to help fund her research on the political participation of women in inter-war Germany. Dr. Chamberlin's research on the women of Germany's Catholic Center Party during the Weimar Republic (the 1920s) promises to fill gaping holes in the scholarship of both women's history and German history. Her scholarship will shed light on larger issues pertaining to women's political involvement and the impact that they had on the nation of Germany during this pivotal period in the history of the Western world.

Dr. Chamberlin's ground-breaking research on the political involvement of the Catholic women of Germany's Ruhr Valley will take her to archives located in the German cities of Bonn, Munich, Cologne, Muenster, Dortmund, and several other smaller cities in the Ruhr Valley. The Summer Research Stipend from the WIU Foundation will allow her to conduct this vital research in Germany, by helping to defray a good portion of the travel-related expenses necessarily incurred by all historians, who must visit archival collections to conduct their research.

Dr. Chamberlin's research on twentieth-century German women supports the University's commitment to greater educational opportunity and to academic excellence, as insights from her research will enrich her undergraduate and graduate course offerings on European women's history, German history, and twentieth-century European history. Although a relatively new member of the History Department, Dr. Chamberlin's research has already gained attention from national and international scholars in the field of women's history.